and derive neither force nor interest from being exposed to public view.
They are old familiar acquaintance, and any change in them, arising from
the adventitious ornaments of style or dress, is little to their
advantage. After I have once written on a subject, it goes out of my
mind: my feelings about it have been melted down into words, and then
I forget. I have, as it were, discharged my memory of its old habitual
reckoning, and rubbed out the score of real sentiment. For the future
it exists only for the sake of others. But I cannot say, from my own
experience, that the same process takes place in transferring our ideas
to canvas; they gain more than they lose in the mechanical
transformation. One is never tired of painting, because you have to set
down not what you knew already, but what you have just discovered. In
the former case you translate feelings into words; in the latter, names
into things. There is a continual creation out of nothing going on.
With every stroke of the brush a new field of inquiry is laid open; new
difficulties arise, and new triumphs are prepared over them. By
comparing the imitation with the original, you see what you have done,
and how much you have still to do. The test of the senses is severer
than that of fancy, and an over-match even for the delusions of our
self-love. One part of a picture shames another, and you determine to
paint up to yourself, if you cannot come up to Nature. Every object
becomes lustrous from the light thrown back upon it by the mirror of
art: and by the aid of the pencil we may be said to touch and handle the
objects of sight. The air-drawn visions that hover on the verge of
existence have a bodily presence given them on the canvas: the form of
beauty is changed into a substance: the dream and the glory of the
universe is made "palpable to feeling as well as sight." -- And see! a
rainbow starts from the canvas, with its humid train of glory, as if it
were drawn from its cloudy arch in heaven. The spangled landscape
glitters with drops of dew after the shower. The "fleecy fools" show
their coats in the gleams of the setting sun. The shepherds pipe their
farewell notes in the fresh evening air. And is this bright vision made
from a dead, dull blank, like a bubble reflecting the mighty fabric of
the universe? Who would think this miracle of Rubens" pencil possible
to be performed? Who, having seen it, would not spend his life to do
the like? See how the rich fallows, the bare stubble-field, the scanty
harvest-home, drag in Rembrandt's landscapes! How often have I looked
at them and nature, and tried to do the same, till the very "light
thickened," and there was an earthiness in the feeling of the air!
There is no end of the refinements of art and nature in this respect.
One may look at the misty glimmering horizon till the eye dazzles and
the imagination is lost, in hopes to transfer the whole interminable
expanse at one blow upon the canvas. Wilson said, he used to try to
paint the effect of the motes dancing in the setting sun. At another
time, a friend, coming into his painting-room when he was sitting on the
ground in a melancholy posture, observed that his picture looked like a
landscape after a shower: he started up with the greatest delight, and
said, "That is the effect I intended to produce, but thought I had
failed." Wilson was neglected; and, by degrees, neglected his art to
apply himself to brandy. His hand became unsteady, so that it was only
by repeated attempts that he could reach the place or produce the effect
he aimed at; and when he had done a little to a picture, he would say to
any acquaintance who chanced to drop in, "I have painted enough for one
day: come, let us go somewhere." It was not so Claude left his
pictures, or his studies on the banks of the Tiber, to go in search of
other enjoyments, or ceased to gaze upon the glittering sunny vales and
distant hills; and while his eye drank in the clear sparkling hues and
lovely forms of nature, his hand stamped them on the lucid canvas to
last there for ever! One of the most delightful parts of my life was
one fine summer, when I used to walk out of an evening to catch the last
light of the sun, gemming the green slopes or russet lawns, and gilding
tower or tree, while the blue sky, gradually turning to purple and gold,
or skirted with dusky grey, hung its broad marble pavement over all, as
we see it in the great master of Italian landscape. But to come to a
more particular explanation of the subject:--

The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman with the upper
part of the face shaded by her bonnet, and I certainly laboured [at] it
with great perseverance.4 It took me numberless sittings to do it. I
have it by me still, and sometimes look at it with surprise, to think
how much pains were thrown away to little purpose, -- yet not altogether
in vain if it taught me to see good in everything, and to know that
there is nothing vulgar in Nature seen with the eye of science or of
true art. Refinement creates beauty everywhere: it is the grossness of
the spectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the object. Be
this as it may, I spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I
thought that life was so too at that moment. I got in the general
effect the first day; and pleased and surprised enough I was at my
success. The rest was a work of time -- of weeks and months (if need
were), of patient toil and careful finishing. I had seen an old head by
Rembrandt at Burleigh House, and if I could produce a head at all like
Rembrandt in a year, in my lifetime, it would be glory and felicity and
wealth and fame enough for me! The head I had seen at Burleigh was an
exact and wonderful facsimile of nature, and I resolved to make mine (as
nearly as I could) an exact facsimile of nature. I did not then, nor do
I now believe, with Sir Joshua, that the perfection of art consists in
giving general appearances without individual details, but in giving
general appearances with individual details. Otherwise, I had done my
work the first day. But I saw something more in nature than general
effect, and I thought it worth my while to give it in the picture.
There was a gorgeous effect of light and shade; but there was a delicacy
as well as depth in the chiaroscuro which I was bound to follow into its
dim and scarce perceptible variety of tone and shadow. Then I had to
make the transition from a strong light to as dark a shade, preserving
the masses, but gradually softening off the intermediate parts. It was
so in nature; the difficulty was to make it so in the copy. I tried,
and failed again and again; I strove harder, and succeeded as I thought.
The wrinkles in Rembrandt were not hard lines, but broken and
irregular. I saw the same appearance in nature, and strained every
nerve to give it. If I could hit off this edgy appearance, and insert
the reflected light in the furrows of old age in half a morning, I did
not think I had lost a day. Beneath the shrivelled yellow parchment
look of the skin, there was here and there a streak of the blood-colour
tinging the face; this I made a point of conveying, and did not cease to
compare what I saw with what I did (with jealous, lynx-eyed
watchfulness) till I succeeded to the best of my ability and judgment.
How many revisions were there! How many attempts to catch an expression
which I had seen the day before! How often did we try to get the old
position, and wait for the return of the same light! There was a
puckering up of the lips, a cautious introversion of the eye under the
shadow of the bonnet, indicative of the feebleness and suspicion of old
age, which at last we managed, after many trials and some quarrels, to a
tolerable nicety. The picture was never finished, and I might have gone
on with it to the present hour.5 I used to sit it on the ground when
my day's work was done, and saw revealed to me with swimming eyes the
birth of new hopes and of a new world of objects. The painter thus
learns to look at Nature with different eyes. He before saw her "as in
a glass darkly, but now face to face." He understands the texture and
meaning of the visible universe, and "sees into the life of things," not
by the help of mechanical instruments, but of the improved exercise of
his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with Nature. The meanest thing
is not lost upon him, for he looks at it with an eye to itself, not
merely to his own vanity or interest, or the opinion of the world. Even
where there is neither beauty nor use -- if that ever were -- still there is
truth, and a sufficient source of gratification in the indulgence of
curiosity and activity of mind. The humblest printer is a true scholar;
and the best of scholars -- the scholar of Nature. For myself, and for
the real comfort and satisfaction of the thing, I had rather have been
Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow, than the greatest casuist or philologer that
ever lived. The painter does not view things in clouds or "mist, the
common gloss of theologians," but applies the same standard of truth and
disinterested spirit of inquiry, that influence his daily practice, to
other subjects. He perceives form, he distinguishes character. He
reads men and books with an intuitive eye. He is a critic as well as a
connoisseur. The conclusions he draws are clear and convincing, because
they are taken from the things themselves. He is not a fanatic, a dupe,
or a slave; for the habit of seeing for himself also disposes him to
judge for himself. The most sensible men I know (taken as a class) are
painters; that is, they are the most lively observers of what passes in
the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their
own minds. From their profession they in general mix more with the
world than authors; and if they have not the same fund of acquired
knowledge, are obliged to rely more on individual sagacity. I might
mention the names of Opie, Fuseli, Northcote, as persons distinguished
for striking description and acquaintance with the subtle traits of
character.6 Painters in ordinary society, or in obscure situations
where their value is not known, and they are treated with neglect and
indifference, have sometimes a forward self-sufficiency of manner; but
this is not so much their fault as that of others. Perhaps their want
of regular education may also be in fault in such cases. Richardson,
who is very tenacious of the respect in which the profession ought to be
held, tells a story of Michael Angelo, that after a quarrel between him
and Pope Julius II., "upon account of a slight the artist conceived the
pontiff had put upon him, Michael Angelo was introduced by a bishop,
who, thinking to serve the artist by it, made it an argument that the
Pope should be reconciled to him, because men of his profession were
commonly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise; his holiness,
enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and told him, it was
he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man himself would not
offend: the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and Michael Angelo
had the Pope's benediction, accompanied with presents. This bishop had
fallen into the vulgar error, and was rebuked accordingly."

To give one instance more, and then I will have done with this rambling
discourse. One of my first attempts was a picture of my father, who was
then in a green old age,10 with strong-marked features, and scarred with
the smallpox. I drew it out with a broad light crossing the face,
looking down, with spectacles on, reading. The book was Shaftesbury's
Characteristics, in a fine old binding, with Gribelin's etchings. My
father would as lieve it had been any other book; but for him to read
was to be content, was "riches fineless." The sketch promised well; and
I set to work to finish it, determined to spare no time nor pains. My
father was willing to sit as long as I pleased; for there is a natural
desire in the mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be the object of
continued attention, to have one's likeness multiplied; and besides his
satisfaction in the picture, he had some pride in the artist, though he
would rather I should have written a sermon than painted like Rembrandt
or like Raphael. Those winter days, with the gleams of sunshine coming
through the chapel-windows, and cheered by the notes of the
robin-redbreast in our garden (that "ever in the haunch of winter
sings"), -- as my afternoon's work drew to a close, -- were among the
happiest of my life. When I gave the effect I intended to any part of
the picture for which I had prepared my colours; when I imitated the
roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil; when I hit the
clear, pearly tone of a vein; when I gave the ruddy complexion of
health, the blood circulating under the broad shadows of one side of the
face, I thought my fortune made; or rather it was already more than
made, I might one day be able to say with Correggio, "I also am a
painter!" It was an idle thought, a boy's conceit; but it did not make
me less happy at the time. I used regularly to set my work in the chair
to look at it through the long evenings; and many a time did I return to
take leave of it before I could go to bed at night. I remember sending
it with a throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing it hung up there
by the side of one of the Honourable Mr. Skeffington (now Sir George).
There was nothing in common between them, but that they were the
portraits of two very good-natured men. I think, but am not sure, that
I finished this portrait (or another afterwards) on the same day that
the news of the battle of Austerlitz came; I walked out in the
afternoon, and, as I returned, saw the evening star set over a poor
man's cottage with other thoughts and feelings than I shall ever have
again. Oh for the revolution of the great Platonic year, that those
times might come over again! I could sleep out the three hundred and
sixty-five thousand intervening years very contentedly! -- The picture is
left: the table, the chair, the window where I learned to construe Livy,
the chapel where my father preached, remain where they were; but he
himself is gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope, and charity!11

_______________________________

ESSAY II

The same subject continued.

The painter not only takes a delight in nature, he has a new and
exquisite source of pleasure opened to him in the study and
contemplation of works of art --

He turns aside to view a country gentleman's seat with eager looks,
thinking it may contain some of the rich products of art. There is an
air round Lord Radnor's park, for there hang the two Claudes, the
Morning and Evening of the Roman Empire -- round Wilton House, for there
is Vandyke's picture of the Pembroke family -- round Blenheim, for there
is his picture of the Duke of Buckingham's children, and the most
magnificent collection of Rubenses in the world -- at Knowsley, for there
is Rembrandt's Handwriting on the Wall -- and at Burleigh, for there are
some of Guido's angelic heads. The young artist makes a pilgrimage to
each of these places, eyes them wistfully at a distance, "bosomed high
in tufted trees," and feels an interest in them of which the owner is
scarce conscious: he enters the well-swept walks and echoing archways,
passes the threshold, is led through wainscoted rooms, is shown the
furniture, the rich hangings, the tapestry, the massy services of
plate -- and, at last, is ushered into the room where his treasure is, the
idol of his vows -- some speaking face or bright landscape! It is stamped
on his brain, and lives there thenceforward, a tally for nature, and a
test of art. He furnishes out the chambers of the mind from the spoils
of time, picks and chooses which shall have the best places -- nearest his
heart. He goes away richer than he came, richer than the possessor; and
thinks that he may one day return, when he perhaps shall have done
something like them, or even from failure shall have learned to admire
truth and genius more.

My first initiation in the mysteries of the art was at the Orleans
Gallery: it was there I formed my taste, such as it is; so that I am
irreclaimably of the old school in painting. I was staggered when I saw
the works there collected, and looked at them with wondering and with
longing eyes. A mist passed away from my sight: the scales fell off. A
new sense came upon me, a new heaven and a new earth stood before me. I
saw the soul speaking in the face -- "hands that the rod of empire had
swayed" in mighty ages past -- "a forked mountain or blue promontory,"

-- with trees upon't
That nod unto the world, and mock our eyes with air.

Old Time had unlocked his treasures, and Fame stood portress at the
door. We had all heard of the names of Titian, Raphael, Guido,
Domenichino, the Caracci -- but to see them face to face, to be in the
same room with their deathless productions, was like breaking some
mighty spell--was almost an effect of necromancy! From that time I
lived in a world of pictures. Battles, sieges, speeches in parliament
seemed mere idle noise and fury, "signifying nothing," compared with
those mighty works and dreaded names that spoke to me in the eternal
silence of thought. This was the more remarkable, as it was but a short
time before that I was not only totally ignorant of, but insensible to
the beauties of art. As an instance, I remember that one afternoon I
was reading The Provoked Husband with the highest relish, with a green
woody landscape of Ruysdael or Hobbima just before me, at which I looked
off the book now and then, and wondered what there could be in that sort
of work to satisfy or delight the mind -- at the same time asking myself,
as a speculative question, whether I should ever feel an interest in it
like what I took in reading Vanbrugh and Cibber?

I had made some progress in painting when I went to the Louvre to study,12
and I never did anything afterwards. I never shall forget conning over
the Catalogue which a friend lent me just before I set out. The
pictures, the names of the painters, seemed to relish in the mouth.
There was one of Titian's Mistress at her toilette. Even the colours
with which the painter had adorned her hair were not more golden, more
amiable to sight, than those which played round and tantalised my fancy
ere I saw the picture. There were two portraits by the same hand -- "A
young Nobleman with a glove" -- Another, "a companion to it." I read the
description over and over with fond expectancy, and filled up the
imaginary outline with whatever I could conceive of grace, and dignity,
and an antique gusto -- all but equal to the original. There was the
Transfiguration too. With what awe I saw it in my mind's eye, and was
overshadowed with the spirit of the artist! Not to have been
disappointed with these works afterwards, was the highest compliment I
can pay to their transcendent merits. Indeed, it was from seeing other
works of the same great masters that I had formed a vague, but no
disparaging idea of these. The first day I got there, I was kept for
some time in the French Exhibition Room, and thought I should not be
able to get a sight of the old masters. I just caught a peep at them
through the door (vile hindrance!) like looking out of purgatory into
paradise -- from Poussin's noble, mellow-looking landscapes to where
Rubens hung out his gaudy banner, and down the glimmering vista to the
rich jewels of Titian and the Italian school. At last, by much
importunity, I was admitted, and lost not an instant in making use of my
new privilege. It was un beau jour to me. I marched delighted
through a quarter of a mile of the proudest efforts of the mind of man,
a whole creation of genius, a universe of art! I ran the gauntlet of all
the schools from the bottom to the top; and in the end got admitted into
the inner room, where they had been repairing some of their greatest
works. Here the Transfiguration, the St. Peter Martyr, and the St.
Jerome of Domenichino stood on the floor, as if they had bent their
knees, like camels stooping, to unlade their riches to the spectator.
On one side, on an easel, stood Hippolito de Medici (a portrait by
Titian), with a boar-spear in his hand, looking through those he saw,
till you turned away from the keen glance; and thrown together in heaps
were landscapes of the same hand, green pastoral hills and vales, and
shepherds piping to their mild mistresses underneath the flowering
shade. Reader, "if thou hast not seen the Louvre thou art damned!" -- for
thou hast not seen the choicest remains of the works of art; or thou
hast not seen all these together with their mutually reflected glories.
I say nothing of the statues; for I know but little of sculpture, and
never liked any till I saw the Elgin Marbles. . . . Here, for four
months together, I strolled and studied, and daily heard the warning
sound -- "Quatres heures passees, il faut fermer, Citoyens" -- (Ah! why did
they ever change their style?) muttered in coarse provincial French; and
brought away with me some loose draughts and fragments, which I have
been forced to part with, like drops of life-blood, for "hard money."
How often, thou tenantless mansion of godlike magnificence -- how often
has my heart since gone a pilgrimage to thee!

It has been made a question, whether the artist, or the mere man of
taste and natural sensibility, receives most pleasure from the
contemplation of works of art; and I think this question might be
answered by another as a sort of experimentum crucis, namely, whether
any one out of that "number numberless" of mere gentlemen and amateurs,
who visited Paris at the period here spoken of, felt as much interest,
as much pride or pleasure in this display of the most striking monuments
of art as the humblest student would? The first entrance into the
Louvre would be only one of the events of his journey, not an event in
his life, remembered ever after with thankfulness and regret. He would
explore it with the same unmeaning curiosity and idle wonder as he would
the Regalia in the Tower, or the Botanic Garden in the Tuileries, but
not with the fond enthusiasm of an artist. How should he? His is
"casual fruition, joyless, unendeared." But the painter is wedded to
his art -- the mistress, queen, and idol of his soul. He has embarked his
all in it, fame, time, fortune, peace of mind -- his hopes in youth, his
consolation in age: and shall he not feel a more intense interest in
whatever relates to it than the mere indolent trifler? Natural
sensibility alone, without the entire application of the mind to that
one object, will not enable the possessor to sympathise with all the
degrees of beauty and power in the conceptions of a Titian or a
Correggio; but it is he only who does this, who follows them into all
their force and matchless race, that does or can feel their full value.
Knowledge is pleasure as well as power. No one but the artist who has
studied nature and contended with the difficulties of art, can be aware
of the beauties, or intoxicated with a passion for painting. No one who
has not devoted his life and soul to the pursuit of art can feel the
same exultation in its brightest ornaments and loftiest triumphs which
an artist does. Where the treasure is, there the heart is also. It is
now seventeen years since I was studying in the Louvre (and I have long
since given up all thoughts of the art as a profession), but long after
I returned, and even still, I sometimes dream of being there again -- of
asking for the old pictures -- and not finding them, or finding them
changed or faded from what they were, I cry myself awake! What
gentleman-amateur ever does this at such a distance of time, -- that is,
ever received pleasure or took interest enough in them to produce so
lasting an impression?

But it is said that if a person had the same natural taste, and the same
acquired knowledge as an artist, without the petty interests and
technical notions, he would derive a purer pleasure from seeing a fine
portrait, a fine landscape, and so on. This, however, is not so much
begging the question as asking an impossibility: he cannot have the same
insight into the end without having studied the means; nor the same love
of art without the same habitual and exclusive attachment to it.
Painters are, no doubt, often actuated by jealousy to that only which
they find useful to themselves in painting. Wilson has been seen poring
over the texture of a Dutch cabinet-picture, so that he could not see
the picture itself. But this is the perversion and pedantry of the
profession, not its true or genuine spirit. If Wilson had never looked
at anything but megilps and handling, he never would have put the soul
of life and manners into his pictures, as he has done. Another
objection is, that the instrumental parts of the art, the means, the
first rudiments, paints, oils, and brushes, are painful and disgusting;
and that the consciousness of the difficulty and anxiety with which
perfection has been attained must take away from the pleasure of the
finest performance. This, however, is only an additional proof of the
greater pleasure derived by the artist from his profession; for these
things which are said to interfere with and destroy the common interest
in works of art do not disturb him; he never once thinks of them, he is
absorbed in the pursuit of a higher object; he is intent, not on the
means, but the end; he is taken up, not with the difficulties, but with
the triumph over them. As in the case of the anatomist, who overlooks
many things in the eagerness of his search after abstract truth; or the
alchemist who, while he is raking into his soot and furnaces, lives in a
golden dream; a lesser gives way to a greater object. But it is
pretended that the painter may be supposed to submit to the unpleasant
part of the process only for the sake of the fame or profit in view. So
far is this from being a true state of the case, that I will venture to
say, in the instance of a friend of mine who has lately succeeded in an
important undertaking in his art, that not all the fame he has acquired,
not all the money he has received from thousands of admiring spectators,
not all the newspaper puffs, -- nor even the praise of the Edinburgh
Review, -- not all these put together ever gave him at any time the same
genuine, undoubted satisfaction as any one half-hour employed in the
ardent and propitious pursuit of his art -- in finishing to his heart's
content a foot, a hand, or even a piece of drapery. What is the state
of mind of an artist while he is at work? He is then in the act of
realising the highest idea he can form of beauty or grandeur: he
conceives, he embodies that which he understands and loves best: that
is, he is in full and perfect possession of that which is to him the
source of the highest happiness and intellectual excitement which he can
enjoy.

In short, as a conclusion to this argument, I will mention a
circumstance which fell under my knowledge the other day. A friend13 had
bought a print of Titian's Mistress, the same to which I have alluded
above. He was anxious to show it me on this account. I told him it was
a spirited engraving, but it had not the look of the original. I
believe he thought this fastidious, till I offered to show him a rough
sketch of it, which I had by me. Having seen this, he said he perceived
exactly what I meant, and could not bear to look at the print
afterwards. He had good sense enough to see the difference in the
individual instance; but a person better acquainted with Titian's manner
and with art in general -- that is, of a more cultivated and refined
taste -- would know that it was a bad print, without having any immediate
model to compare it with. He would perceive with a glance of the eye,
with a sort of instinctive feeling, that it was hard, and without that
bland, expansive, and nameless expression which always distinguished
Titian's most famous works. Any one who is accustomed to a head in a
picture can never reconcile himself to a print from it; but to the
ignorant they are both the same. To a vulgar eye there is no difference
between a Guido and a daub -- between a penny print, or the vilest scrawl,
and the most finished performance. In other words, all that excellence
which lies between these two extremes, -- all, at least, that marks the
excess above mediocrity, -- all that constitutes true beauty, harmony,
refinement, grandeur, is lost upon the common observer. But it is from
this point that the delight, the glowing raptures of the true adept
commence. An uninformed spectator may like an ordinary drawing better
than the ablest connoisseur; but for that very reason he cannot like the
highest specimens of art so well. The refinements not only of execution
but of truth and nature are inaccessible to unpractised eyes. The
exquisite gradations in a sky of Claude's are not perceived by such
persons, and consequently the harmony cannot be felt. Where there is no
conscious apprehension, there can be no conscious pleasure. Wonder at
the first sights of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and
novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the
growth of taste and knowledge. "I would not wish to have your eyes,"
said a good-natured man to a critic who was finding fault with a picture
in which the other saw no blemish. Why so? The idea which prevented
him from admiring this inferior production was a higher idea of truth
and beauty which was ever present with him, and a continual source of
pleasing and lofty contemplations. It may be different in a taste for
outward luxuries and the privations of mere sense; but the idea of
perfection, which acts as an intellectual foil, is always an addition, a
support, and a proud consolation!

Richardson, in his Essays,14 which ought to be better known, has left
some striking examples of the felicity and infelicity of artists, both
as it relates to their external fortune and to the practice of their
art. In speaking of the knowledge of hands, he exclaims: "When one is
considering a picture or a drawing, one at the same time thinks this was
done by him15 who had many extraordinary endowments of body and mind,
but was withal very capricious; who was honoured in life and death,
expiring in the arms of one of the greatest princes of that age, Francis
I., King of France, who loved him as a friend. Another is of him16 who
lived a long and happy life, beloved of Charles V. emperor; and many
others of the first princes of Europe. When one has another in hand, we think this was done by one17 who so excelled in three arts as that any of them in that degree had rendered him worthy of immortality; and one
moreover that durst contend with his sovereign (one of the haughtiest
popes that ever was) upon a slight offered to him, and extricated
himself with honour. Another is the work of him18 who, without any one exterior advantage but mere strength of genius, had the most sublime
imaginations, and executed them accordingly, yet lived and died
obscurely. Another we shall consider as the work of him19 who restored
Painting when it had almost sunk; of him whom art made honourable, but
who, neglecting and despising greatness with a sort of cynical pride,
was treated suitably to the figure he gave himself, not his intrinsic
worth; which, [he] not having philosophy enough to bear it, broke his
heart. Another is done by one20 who (on the contrary) was a fine
gentleman and lived in great magnificence, and was much honoured by his
own and foreign princes; who was a courtier, a statesman, and a painter;
and so much all these, that when he acted in either character, that
seemed to be his business, and the others his diversion. I say when one
thus reflects, besides the pleasure arising from the beauties and
excellences of the work, the fine ideas it gives us of natural things,
the noble way of thinking it suggest to us, an additional pleasure
results from the above considerations. But, oh! the pleasure, when a
connoisseur and lover of art has before him a picture or drawing of
which he can say this is the hand, these are the thoughts of him21 who
was one of the politest, best-natured gentlemen that ever was; and
beloved and assisted by the greatest wits and the greatest men then in
Rome: of him who lived in great fame, honour, and magnificence, and died
extremely lamented; and missed a Cardinal's hat only by dying a few
months too soon; but was particularly esteemed and favoured by two
Popes, the only ones who filled the chair of St. Peter in his time, and
as great men as ever sat there since that apostle, if at least he ever
did: one, in short, who could have been a Leonardo, a Michael Angelo, a
Titian, a Correggio, a Parmegiano, an Annibal, a Rubens, or any other
whom he pleased, but none of them could ever have been a Raffaelle."

The same writer speaks feelingly of the change in the style of different
artists from their change of fortune, and as the circumstances are
little known I will quote the passage relating to two of them:--

"Guido Reni, from a prince-like affluence of fortune (the just reward of
his angelic works), fell to a condition like that of a hired servant to
one who supplied him with money for what he did at a fixed rate; and
that by his being bewitched by a passion for gaming, whereby he lost
vast sums of money; and even what he got in his state of servitude by
day, he commonly lost at night: nor could he ever be cured of this
cursed madness. Those of his works, therefore, which he did in this
unhappy part of his life may easily be conceived to be in a different
style to what he did before, which in some things, that is, in the airs
of his heads (in the gracious kind) had a delicacy in them peculiar to
himself, and almost more than human. But I must not multiply instances.
Parmegiano is one that alone takes in all the several kinds of
variation, and all the degrees of goodness, from the lowest of the
indifferent up to the sublime. I can produce evident proofs of this in
so easy a gradation, that one cannot deny but that he that did this
might do that, and very probably did so; and thus one may ascend and
descend, like the angels on Jacob's ladder, whose foot was upon the
earth, but its top reached to Heaven.

"And this great man had his unlucky circumstance. He became mad after
the philosopher's stone, and did but very little in painting or drawing
afterwards. Judge what that was, and whether there was not an
alteration of style from what he had done before this devil possessed
him. His creditors endeavoured to exorcise him, and did him some good,
for be set himself to work again in his own way; but if a drawing I have
of a Lucretia be that he made for his last picture, as it probably is
(Vasari says that was the subject of it), it is an evident proof of his
decay; it is good indeed, but it wants much of the delicacy which is
commonly seen in his works; and so I always thought before I knew or
imagined it to be done in this his ebb of genius."

We have had two artists of our own country whose fate has been as
singular as it was hard: Gandy was a portrait-painter in the beginning
of the last century, whose heads were said to have come near to
Rembrandt's, and he was the undoubted prototype of Sir Joshua Reynolds's
style. Yet his name has scarcely been heard of; and his reputation,
like his works, never extended beyond his own country. What did he
think of himself and of a fame so bounded? Did he ever dream he was
indeed an artist? Or how did this feeling in him differ from the vulgar
conceit of the lowest pretender? The best known of his works is a
portrait of an alderman of Exeter, in some public building in that city.

Poor Dan. Stringer! Forty years ago he had the finest hand and the
clearest eye of any artist of his time, and produced heads and drawings
that would not have disgraced a brighter period in the art. But he fell
a martyr (like Burns) to the society of country gentlemen, and then of
those whom they would consider as more his equals. I saw him many years
ago when he treated the masterly sketches he had by him (one in
particular of the group of citizens in Shakespeare "swallowing the
tailor's news") as "bastards of his genius, not his children," and
seemed to have given up all thoughts of his art. Whether he is since
dead, I cannot say; the world do not so much as know that he ever lived!

2 [Original note.] There is a passage in Werter which contains a very pleasing illustration of this doctrine, and is as follows:-
"About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. It is very
agreeably situated on the side of a hill: from one of the paths which
leads out of the village, you have a view of the whole country; and
there to a good old woman who sells wine, coffee, and tea there: but
better than all this are two lime-trees before the church, which spread
their branches over a little green, surrounded by barns and cottages. I
have seen few places more retired and peaceful. I send for a chair and
table from the old woman's, and there I drink my coffee and read Homer.
It was by accident that I discovered this place one fine afternoon: all
was perfect stillness; everybody was in the fields, except a little boy
about four years old, who was sitting on the ground, and holding between
his knees a child of about six months; he pressed it to his bosom with
his little arms, which made a sort of great chair for it; and
notwithstanding the vivacity which sparkled in his eyes, he sat
perfectly still. Quite delighted with the scene, I sat down on a plough
opposite, and had great pleasure in drawing this little picture of
brotherly tenderness. I added a bit of the hedge, the barn-door, and
some broken cart-wheels, without any order, just as they happened to
lie; and in about an hour I found I had made a drawing of great
expression and very correct design without having put in anything of my
own. This confirmed me in the resolution I had made before, only to
copy Nature for the future. Nature is inexhaustible, and alone forms
the greatest masters. Say what you will of rules, they alter the true
features and the natural expression." (Page 15.)

3 [Ed. note in Bohn ed.] A very popular ballad and ballad tune. It is refereed to in a tract printed in 1618. The ballad itself is inserted in Menez's Collection of Poems, 1767. --Ed. [William Carew Hazlitt.]

4 [Ed. note in Bohn ed.] This person the writer met with in the vicinity of Manchester, in 1803 (I believe): the picture is still in my possession; but it has suffered much from [neglect]. --Ed.

5 [Original note.] It is at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish (the perishable vehicle of the English school), like an envelope of goldbeaters' skin, so as to be hardly visible.

6 [Original note.] Men in business, who are answerable with their fortunes for the consequences of their opinions, and are therefore accustomed to
ascertain pretty accurately the grounds on which they act, before they
commit themselves on the event, are often men of remarkably quick and
sound judgements. Artists in like manner must know tolerably well what
they are about, before they can bring the result of their observations
to the test of ocular demonstration.

7 [Original note.] The famous Schiller used to say, that he found the great happiness of life, after all, to consist in the discharge of some mechanical duty.

8 [Original note.] The rich impasting of Titian and Giorgione combines something of the advantages of both these styles, the felicity of the one with the
carefulness of the other, and is perhaps to be preferred to either.

9 [Ed. note in Bohn ed.] Author of the Light of Nature Pursued and Vocal Sounds, both published under the nom de plume of Edward Search. He was a man of fortune, and resided at Betchworth castle, Surrey, the ancient seat of the Brown family. --Ed.

10 [Ed. note in Bohn ed.] This portrait was taken in 1804; the Rev. W. Hazlitt was then sixty-eight, and in charge of the Unitarian congregation at Wem, in Shropshire. --Ed.

11 [Ed. note in Bohn ed.] He died at Crediton, near Exeter, July 16, 1820 at age 84, [cite given] ... --Ed.

12 [Ed. note in Bohn ed.] In 1802. See the author's letters from the Louvre [Cite given] ... --Ed.